Xenophobia and Domain Name Changes
David Coursey, writing for PC World is concerned that domain name endings will now be allowed to contain non-latin characters, facilitating the internet for non-English speakers.
This is the kind of paranoia self-proclaimed conservatives like to outrage over.
Is this a change for the better?
Perhaps, but is there any doubt that if another country had “invented” the Internet–say the Russians–that we’d all have had to learn to type Cyrillic characters by now? Moreover, do you think they or the Chinese or Japanese would have changed the Internet just to suit English-speakers.
Indeed, had the Internet been developed around a non-Latin character set, would it even exist today? Has the success of the Internet not been linked to the role of English as the global language of business and popular culture?
If another country had “invented” the internet, there is a good probability that it would have been a country that uses the latin character set. If it had been a country like Russia, perhaps we would have to learn to type Cyrillic characters, but given that English is such a widely used language, the internet WOULD have been revised in order to suit English-Speakers rather quickly.
The internet is important because it connects us, whether using Cyrillic, Thai or Latin character sets.
David, your arguments are ethnocentric and exude some sort of unjustified anger toward other cultures. Get some help.